Senses working overtime #315

1 Be there, be present - Greg Dennis

Greg Dennis photography

2 Rest in peace: actor Charles Grodin, age 86.

3 Beautiful people

Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler Ross on how beautiful people are made:

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."

Source: Death: The Final Stage of Growth (via James Clear's newsletter - great edition - you can also follow him via this link: https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/may-20-2021?rh_ref=25fec73b)

4 Knowing loss

Author T.H. White on learning as a cure for sadness:

"The best thing for being sad… is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."

Source: The Once and Future King (also via James Clear's newsletter) 

5 During the impossible age for everyone

There are so many people who’ve come before us,
arrows and wagon wheels, obsidian tools, buffalo.
Look out at the meadow, you can almost see them,
generations dissolved in the bluegrass and hay.
I want to try and be terrific. Even for an hour.

(2)

If you walk long enough, your crowded head clears,
like how all the cattle run off loudly as you approach.
This fence is a good fence, but I doubt my own haywire
will hold up to all this blank sky, so open and explicit.
I’m like a fence, or a cow, or that word, yonder.

(3)

There is a slow tractor traffic hollering outside,
and I’d like not to be traffic, but the window shaking.
Your shoes are piled up with mine, and the heat
comes on, makes a simple noise, a dog-yawn.
People have done this before, but not us.

—Ada Limón, "During the Impossible Age of Everyone" (from Laura Olin's newsletter)

Overtime: No is a decision

"Saying no saves you time in the future. Saying yes costs you time in the future.

No is like a time credit. You can spend that block of time in the future.

Yes is like a time debt. You have to repay that commitment at some point.

No is a decision. Yes is a responsibility." - James Clear